The Gift I Almost Skipped: Melissa & Doug Rainbow Stacker

I almost did not buy it. That is the honest truth of it. Last November I stood in the toy aisle of a store over on Camp Bowie with my phone in one hand and a list from my daughter-in-law in the other, and I talked myself out of the Melissa & Doug Rainbow Stacker three separate times before I finally put it in the cart.

Here is why I hesitated. Sophie is two. She lives in Oklahoma City, three hours up the road with my son Daniel, so most of what I give her gets mailed in a box with a note tucked into the tissue paper. I have mailed enough toys in my life to know how this goes. Something with lights and music arrives, gets a good twenty minutes of attention, and then sits in a corner until it goes to the church nursery. I have been burned by packaging too. A box the size of a suitcase, twenty minutes of wire ties, and what is inside turns out to be a plastic ring with a sticker on it.

Stacking rings looked to me like a toy from my own childhood, and I do not mean that as a compliment. I figured Sophie would look at it once and go find the remote control. What changed my mind was the back of the box. The rings are wood, there are no batteries, and nothing about it needs a phone. Seven rings, a red topper piece, and a base that rocks. That is the entire toy. It is made for eighteen months to three years, which is right where Sophie sits, and it lists at 0.36 kg, light enough to mail without thinking twice.

I wrapped it in tissue, wrote a note that said 'for the best stacker in Oklahoma,' and mailed it the first week of December. Two nights later Daniel video-called me from his kitchen floor. Sophie had the base between her feet and was working a ring down the wooden rod with her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth. When it dropped all the way down she looked up at the phone to see whether I had watched her do it. I had. I clapped at a phone screen in an empty kitchen in Fort Worth like a woman at the rodeo.

I got my hands on it in person in January, on my monthly visit. What I did not expect is that she does not stack them in order. She stacks them in her order, one that makes no sense to anybody over the age of three, and then she knocks the whole thing down and looks at me to see if I will laugh. I always laugh. That is the best part of the toy and it is not even printed on the box.

She stacks them in her order, then knocks the whole thing down and checks my face to see if I will laugh. I always laugh.

What Six Months of a Two-Year-Old Has Done to It

Sophie has had it since December. It has been dropped off a couch, chewed on the topper, and dragged across a hardwood floor by the rod. Wood does what wood does. There are a couple of small dings on the base and one tooth mark I have decided to find charming. Nothing has cracked, nothing has come apart, and nothing needs a screwdriver. My husband passed six years ago and I have gotten used to doing small repairs myself, so I notice when a toy does not ask anything of me.

The rocking base is the piece I underrated. It tips as she loads the rings, so she has to slow down and steady it with her other hand. That little wobble is the whole reason she stays with it for ten minutes instead of two. She is sorting sizes without knowing that is what she is doing. The box calls it color recognition. I call it a quiet ten minutes on the rug with my coffee still warm.

Where it falls short: it is a short toy. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen on a good day, and then she is off to something louder. Mia is seven and Eli is four and neither of them gave it a second look at Christmas. The box says eighteen months to three years and the box is telling the truth. If you are shopping for a five-year-old, keep walking.

Also, the rings end up everywhere. Under the couch, in the bottom of the toy bin, one in the back seat of Daniel's car. There is no bag and no lid. If scattered pieces make you twitchy, buy a small basket to go with it and save yourself the aggravation.

What I like best is that it gives us something to do together that does not involve a screen. When she hands me a ring I have to take it and put it on. That is the entire game. I am sixty-six years old and I sang in a church choir for thirty years, and I will tell you that a two-year-old handing you a wooden ring and waiting for you to stack it is its own kind of music.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to stop hunting for the gift that makes you look like a hero. The toys that got the biggest reaction in my house were never the loud ones. They were the ones a child could pick up by herself, do something small and repeatable with, and then knock down. The Melissa & Doug Rainbow Stacker does one small thing and it does it out of wood. It is plain, it is quiet, and it will outlast the wrapping paper by about a decade. If Sophie outgrows it, it goes on the toy shelf in the grandkids' room, and knowing my family there will be a next baby to hand it to.

Buy it for the child you see once a month, not the one you see every Saturday. The every-Saturday child has plenty of everything. The one who gets a box in the mail needs something that will still be on the floor when you walk through the door, and six months in, this one still was.